9--The Hermit

There is a reason that solitude and meditation is a key component of almost every religion in the world. Every spiritual discipline, every religious practice, every new age wooism has its roots in the key concept.

You must sit still and shut up in order to find and create a relationship with god.

This is because a relationship with god starts inside a relationship with yourself. And if you can’t sit and hang out with yourself, you cannot begin to sit and hang out with god. That’s just the way of things. There is a vastness inside you that is directly connected to the vastness of eternal consciousness. Your mind is the bridge, and your emotions are the gate. But if you cannot get in control of these tools and make them work for you, the mind becomes a congested freeway, and the emotions become a black hole event horizon. Neither of which will take you anywhere you want to go.

The journey to this place begins with the understanding that you are a hot mess. It continues with the resolution to become clear. All through the course of your life you have been accumulating bits and pieces of emotional and mental flotsam—from your parents, from your relationships, from your culture. You have opinions and beliefs that are not authentically yours and may be more damaging than beneficial. If you don’t come to resolution about what is and is not you, you will find yourself lugging around all of this useless crap. You will keep trying to use it to manage your life. But it won’t work. It doesn’t fit. It keeps sending things sideways. Your emotions become raging tides; your mind scatters to the four winds. You become a junkie of anything that creates distractions away from the tools that should be liberating your soul. It eventually becomes easier to simply give into the distractions, and then you are so far away from yourself that you can not seem to find the way home.

Enter meditation. Enter solitude. Enter the still point. Because it is only here that you can take three steps back from the chaos and see it without being it. The emotions are over there. The thoughts are over there. And you are right here. You are right now. Everything that was never yours can be identified and set aside. Everything that you are fed can be observed, weighed, qualified and determined. The immediacy of daily life becomes muted in this space and you come into a deep connection with the core of your being. It isn’t a pretty process. It may not be a peaceful one. But as you do it, it becomes a salvation. Because this is when you find you.

You learn that you and god are but one being. You learn that so many of the seemingly insurmountable problems all have a common root, and once seen, is never hidden again. You come to a very quiet understanding that all of the answers you ever need are sitting very politely in your core being and all you ever had to do was quiet the storm that surrounds that light of who you are. It may seem hard to find at times, but once you have found the gate and built the bridge, all the answers you will ever need are only a breath away.

The Hermit arrives to shine this light for you—the light into the center of your being that is the light of god. There are no secrets here, and no initiation other than your willingness to see. It is also a reminder that you require still time in your life to allow the reflection to be seen. It cannot be forced and it cannot happen in a sea of distraction. Meditation can happen in any fashion, all it needs from you is the time and space to create time and space. So if you want to sit on a pillow and be still and silent for an hour—do it. If you want to sit on the porch with a cup of coffee and watch the wind in the trees—do it. Nowhere is it required for you to do like the Hermit in order to be like the Hermit. The only rules are that you go alone and you go within. You let go of all your coulds, woulds, shoulds and oughts and just sit in reception, waiting for the light to emerge from the fog. You made the fog; You are the light. Just let it go and bask in your own being. It has been there for you all along.

Remember, every answer is already in existence. All possibilities are already probabilities. You aren’t a conquistador of self, you are an archaeologist of self. In other words, everything you need, you already have access to. Period.